"The web is constantly evolving. New and innovative websites are being created every day, pushing the boundaries of HTML in every direction. HTML 4 has been around for nearly a decade now, and publishers seeking new techniques to provide enhanced functionality are being held back by the constraints of the language and browsers. To give authors more flexibility and interoperability, and enable more interactive and exciting websites and applications, HTML 5 introduces and enhances a wide range of features including form controls, APIs, multimedia, structure, and semantics."

Another sad thing is all the bandwidth being wasted by useless flash banners, ads, "splash" pages, page headers, and Myspace widgets.

Sure, every now and then, it's ok for something like Google Video. But this is not the norm by far. Apparently companies like throwing away money on web designer click-monkeys. There's also hidden costs too, of course. If your entire site content is embedded in flash, you'll have to pay consultant fees to fix a misspelled word or update the employee list everytime someone quits. Thank g-d for flashblock, is all I have to say.

Actually, I'd rather noone used any colors at all on their sites so I could just set the default background and font color to my liking. Only a patheticly small amount of the web is actual content. The rest is useless garbage and fluff. Layout != content. Even this site is full of crap.

It's called "advertising". It pays for all the free stuff you like to complain about!

There are much less obtrusive and obnoxious ways of advertising than flash ads that follow you along the page until you click close, banners with video, etc. and so forth. See AdSense for a prime example.

Yes, I do use the webdev toolbar in FF. You're right, it would be a silly thing to do without doing away with all other forms of layout as well.

My ideal static HTML page has normal text content, not broken into a million pages. Images can be inline, if used with moderation and if they are on-topic. Any multimedia or non-standard file types should be linked to, with a note of the file type of the target (that way the user can decide what he wants to do with it). An occasional table is okay, if it is actuallly needed to display content, like in a chart of data.

In a web like this, the user can then make his own appearance decisions, like those I mentioned.

Another sad thing is all the bandwidth being wasted by useless flash banners, ads, "splash" pages, page headers, and Myspace widgets.

Right! I know it's advertising and freedom, etc., and I would never support any mandatory restrictions from any source. But really really hate noisy web pages. And I'm really really grateful to the guys that came up with Adblock.